Poughkeepsie, New York

Since 1959, the Mid-Hudson Library System (MHLS) has acted to ensure the public's right to free access, facilitate economical resource sharing, and promote professional library services while working in partnerships with the independent public and free association libraries in New York's Hudson Valley. MHLS comprises libraries in five counties: Columbia County, Dutchess County, Greene County, Putnam County and Ulster County. The System's headquarters is in the city of Poughkeepsie.

The Adriance Memorial Library is located on Market Street in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It is a stone building in the Classical Revival architectural style erected shortly at the end of the 19th century. In 1982 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the oldest tax-supported library in the state and the third oldest in the United States, dating back to 1839 at various locations prior to the construction of the current building. It is also the main public library of the Poughkeepsie Public Library District, serving the city and town of that name, with a branch in the suburb of Arlington and a branch located at the Family Partnership Center on North Hamilton Street in Poughkeepsie. It is a member library of the Mid-Hudson Library System, which has its headquarters next door. The building has been through two renovations and expansions. A large rear wing was built in the 1920s. It was removed in the early 21st century to make way for an even larger addition. During that time the main building was closed as well for renovations. It was reopened in 2009 with its appearance and layout intact.

The Market Street Row is located on the west side of that street in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, just south of Hulme Park and across from the Adriance Memorial Library, on the southern edge of downtown. It includes three houses, including the Mott-Van Kleeck House, the oldest frame house in the city.Market Street is Poughkeepsie's oldest, in existence in 1709 when a royal decree made it part of the King's Highway, later to become the Albany Post Road after independence. The Mott-Van Kleeck House was built around 1780 by a descendant of the Van Kleeck family, one of Poughkeepsie's oldest. Stylistically it is a precursor to the Federal style, in which later decorative motifs were added. For many years it indicated the beginning of Poughkeepsie to travelers. In the late 19th century, around 1880, the two neighboring houses were built. They were ornate 2+1⁄2-story brick structures with peaked slate roofs, iron cresting, and Shingle-style porches. A tower was added to the Mott-Van Kleeck House, in sympathetic colors and materials.In the automotive era, Market Street was incorporated into US 9, the main route for drivers from New York City to Albany until the construction of the New York State Thruway and the subsequent rerouting of Route 9 onto a new expressway through the city. The houses became decrepit and were threatened during urban renewal efforts in the 1970s. They were preserved instead, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Today they have been redeveloped into commercial offices, like the Hasbrouck House and Amrita Club nearby.

The Hasbrouck House, also known as the Evelyn Samuels Memorial Building, is located on Market Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, next to the Amrita Club building. It was built in 1885 as the home of Frank Hasbrouck, a local judge and historian. The architect was Frederick Clarke Withers. Withers' design, a red brick house of two and a half storeys and raised basement, features many Romanesque Revival touches, such as a recessed front porch with two round-headed arches divided by a spiral column with molded floral design and Corinthian capital. Below the railing are two fielded panels with foliate relief. On the upper stories, there are brownstone windowsills and courses around the house. Other ornaments include an oriel window on the second story, pentagonal dormer on the third, and a parapet roofline.The interior remains intact. The fireplace, brick chimney, glazed tiles and oak woodwork are especially well-preserved examples of late 19th-century decor.The house is the city's most distinguished building in the Romanesque style, complemented nearby by the similar New York State Armory and Harlow Row. It is unusual to find a Romanesque dwelling of this scale in a city Poughkeepsie's size. Normally they were reserved for larger cities, or prison compounds and military bases.In the later years of the 20th century the house became the home of the United Way of the Dutchess-Orange Region which named it after Samuels, a former benefactor. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The Amrita Club building is located at the southeast corner of Church (US 44/NY 55) and Market streets in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It was once home to the club, one of the city's most prestigious gentlemen's organizations. In 1982 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The club was established in the late 19th century, but the building was not erected until the early 20th. It is one of only two brick Colonial Revival buildings in the city, and a sophisticated application of that style. Efforts to redevelop it in the early 21st century led to a protracted legal threats and negotiated settlement between the city and DTI (Decision Technologies International), a local software company which utilized the building as its corporate headquarters and development laboratory.

Harlow Row, also called Brick Row, is a group of brick townhouses in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. While their address is given as 100-106 Market Street, they are actually located on a short side street referred to as Little Market Street, across from a small park with the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Fountain, on the residential southern fringe of the city's downtown. The row consists of four red brick Second Empire townhouses, three stories in height with the mansard roofs typical of the style. The lower stories are rusticated, with arched doorways. An unusual Romanesque Revival tower is located on the north end.They were probably built in the 1870s by William Harlow, a former mayor of the city and architect of St. Paul's Church in the city. He may have been inspired by the attempt of another former mayor, Harvey G. Eastman, to build affordable townhouses near the park now named for him, but on a smaller scale. The row appears on city tax maps from the mid-1870s with Harlow identified as owner of the whole property. However, he was not apparently successful, since the same maps list no traceable owner of the houses themselves.In the 1880s, two local lawyers are identified as owners, and later on Charles Robinson, a liquor wholesaler. He probably added the tower sometime between 1887 and 1895. Other than some gutting of the south and west bays in 1981 to replace the windows, the houses and their period interior features remain intact. In 1982 the row was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The houses fell into disrepair in the late 20th century, one of many highly visible historic buildings in the city to do so. In 2000 Dutchess County awarded a local nonprofit, Hudson River Housing, $194,000 to rehabilitate the row into eight rental units and four commercial spaces. In 2002 the project was completed at a total cost of almost $2 million, and the company began making the units available for lease.

The Garfield Place Historic District is a small residential neighborhood in southern Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It is a 20-acre (8.1 ha) area covering all properties on Garfield Place, which runs for two blocks between Franklin and Montgomery streets, as well as some on nearby sections of Montgomery and Barclay. In 1972 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today's Garfield Place was originally part of a 53-acre (21 ha) area known as the "Little Commons", owned by the van Kleeck family, when Poughkeepsie was incorporated as a village in 1799. In the first decades of the new century, it grew rapidly and a man named Bronson French bought a portion of the Little Commons. In turn he sold it to a partnership of four local businessmen in 1836, who saw it as desirable for upscale homes since it was close to the center of the village and situated on a hill with commanding views of the Hudson River.They surveyed the property and subdivided it into building lots shortly afterward. At auction, the lots sold for an average of $25 per square foot. However, the Panic of 1837 slowed the economy shortly afterwards, and ground was not broken until the early 1850s when Joseph Corlies, one of the partners, built himself the house at 28 Garfield as a demonstration of what sort of home could be built on the new street.Others followed, lured by advertising that cited the quietness of the streets, the view of the river and its proximity to the growing city's downtown. By the 1880s South Liberty Street had been pretty much built out. In 1881, the street's name was changed to Garfield Place in memory of recently assassinated President James A. Garfield. The last lots would be developed in the early 20th century.The houses continued to remain among the city's most desirable addresses, and later on a carriage house originally built for Corlies' home was converted into another residence, 30 Garfield. The street's success as one of the city's first historic districts led the residents of neighboring Academy Street to seek the same status in 1982. It is subject to special architectural rules enforced by the city's Historic District and Landmark Preservation Commission (HDLPC).

Barrett House is a historic home located at Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York, today home to Barrett Art Center. This triple-landmark (National, State, and municipal) Greek Revival brick townhouse was built in the early 1840s. The Barrett House reflects three phases of construction. The original building is a ca. 1842 three-story, three-bay by four-bay Greek Revival brick house with a side-gabled, stepped roof. A two-story, three-bay by two-bay, front-gabled brick addition was constructed to its rear ca. 1867. In the twentieth century, Barrett House achieved notoriety as the family home of Poughkeepsie-born WPA muralist Thomas Weeks Barrett. Jr. (1902-1947), who founded the Dutchess County Art Association (DCAA) in 1935 and lived there until his death in 1947. His artwork, family archive, and DCAA records remain in the house today. Thomas W. Barrett, Jr. graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1926, but his energies and artwork centered on the Hudson Valley. Barrett worked professionally as a designer, painter, printmaker, and as a muralist for the Treasury Relief Art Project (1936) and the Works Progress Administration (1937). As a Hudson Valley “American Scene” painter Barrett fashioned a modern iteration of the region's landscapes first immortalized a century earlier by the founders of the nation's first major art movement, the Hudson River School. Barrett turned his artistic attention to the urban landscapes of cities along the Hudson as symbols of a resilient and modern American character. Barrett organized the first art exhibition in Dutchess County at the Luckey Platt Department Store in 1934. Barrett founded the DCAA a year later. Barrett died in 1947 and his sister bequeathed the townhouse to the DCAA in 1974. The DCAA subsequently converted its first and second floor living spaces to four galleries, a community arts space, and offices, and operates under the name Barrett Art Center. Today, the third-floor studio Barrett designed in 1930, with a 7-foot by 9-foot north-facing sky-light, is an active studio used by an artist in residence. The DCAA collection includes artwork – much of it Barrett's – and archives including his family papers, film, photographs, manuscripts, memorabilia, and DCAA records, all of which remain in the house. The three-story, three bay brick building in the Greek Revival style. It is on a raised basement and features brownstone trim and a third story Eastlake style porch.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.Early 19th century Poughkeepsie & the Construction of 55 Noxon Street One of the oldest communities along the Hudson River, was initially settled during the late seventeenth century. Though it grew slowly, it was well situated near the major transportation routes and was named the county seat in 1717. The village became a center of commerce and trade and by the nineteenth century its economy came to be dominated by industry and manufacturing. For about a decade starting in 1832, Poughkeepsie also became an important center of the regional whaling industry. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Poughkeepsie experienced a real estate boom in response to the growth of these enterprises and the efforts of the local Improvement Party, a group of businessmen and politicians who boosted the City within the region. The area's role as a manufacturing center was spurred by the completion of the Hudson River railroad to Poughkeepsie in 1849.Virgil D. Bonesteel, an ambitious Yale graduate (Phi Beta Kappa, Class of 1827) and descendant of Red Hook's early settlers, was one of the new professionals attracted to the bright future of Poughkeepsie that was heavily promoted during the boom years of the 1830s. His first position was that of law student in the office of James Hooker, Dutchess County's Surrogate for 16 years and a dominant force in the awarding of political patronage jobs within the Democratic Party. Bonesteel quickly became an up-and-coming young leader in county and state Democratic Committee work and was appointed Clerk of the County Board of Supervisors. His rise in these political and legal circles may have been assisted by his marriage in 1840 to Sarah E. Todd of New Milford Connecticut, the niece of Poughkeepsie attorney and former Secretary of the Navy, Smith Thompson who was then serving as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Following the national financial panic of 1837, Poughkeepsie's booming real estate market ground to a near-halt. Bonesteel was able to take advantage of this, purchasing a lot for $1,325 on Noxon Street at a foreclosure auction in November 1841. The lot was made available by the financial collapse of shoe manufacturer Benjamin Bissell, one of the many who had ventured into real estate speculation during the ‘years of Poughkeepsie’s “Improvement Party” boom in the mid-1830s. Newly married, Virgil and Sarah Bonesteel began constructing their home soon after; construction most likely occurred in 1842 since Bonesteel is listed as residing at 55 Noxon St. in the first extant village directory of 1843. The builder is unknown. The completion of the elegant brick town home projected Bonesteel's success within the community. Well-to-do families of this period, such as the Bonesteels, expressed their taste within this restrained form of domestic architecture that symbolized a young nation's hopes for becoming the new embodiment of the purity, strength and equality of an idealized ancient Greece. With its wide frieze of wreathed attic windows, ornamental stoop railing, two story porch with fluted Doric columns, and recessed double front door with rectangular transom, the Bonesteels’ Greek Revival townhouse embodied the quiet elegance typical of this style. In 1844, Bonesteel was appointed to the position of Dutchess County Surrogate. But the rough and tumble of politics derailed Bonesteel's rise when his enemies in the opposing Whig party accused him of levying “bloodsucking” fees on defenseless widows and orphans forced to settle their estates in his court. Bonesteel's seemingly extravagant personal life also came under fire by his enemies in the Whig party newspaper who sarcastically observed, “We understand that our surrogate made an excursion the other day to New Milford WITH A COACH AND FOUR. Now it is clearly none of our business how he rides, but as he is now the leader of the party in the county, he must excuse us for feeling concerned about THE DEMOCRACY OF THE THING…”Whether it was a “coach and four” lifestyle, excessive real estate speculation or some other unknown factor, Bonesteel declared bankruptcy in 1848. In 1849, his extensive real estate holdings were sold to pay his debts. The Bonesteel home at 55 Noxon Street was described in foreclosure auction advertisements as a “large and spacious house, one of the most desirable in Poughkeepsie.”19th Century History of 55 Noxon Street From 1849 to 1866, 55 Noxon St. was owned by Eliza Thompson, the widow of Supreme Court Judge Smith Thompson. Eliza Thompson was the daughter of Henry Livingston, Jr. and grew up on the Livingston estate we know today as Locust Grove. In 1836, she married the much older widower, Supreme Court Justice Smith Thompson and became the elegant young hostess of an elite political circle at her husband's riverfront estate “Rust Plaetz” (now part of Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery). Eliza Thompson used 55 Noxon as an income-producing property, renting it to a series of well-to-do tenants. During the years she owned 55 Noxon Street, Eliza Thompson remarried and began a new life elsewhere. The rental of 55 Noxon Street may have been managed for her, possibly by Jennette Jewett who purchased the property in 1866 and two lots on Mill Street for $14,425. Jewett owned other properties in the city and was not new to the real estate world. In fact, she was the daughter of one of Poughkeepsie's first Main Street developers, the industrialist and inventor Gilbert Brewster. Jennette Jewett likely saw a good investment opportunity in 55 Noxon Street. Properties like it, which were being used as “high class boarding houses,” were in high demand in 1866. A year later, Jewett sold 55 Noxon for $7,000. By 1869, she had sold the property on Mill St. for $8,500 - netting a profit of $1,075 on the deal. The doubling of the house's value from $3,550 in 1849 to $7,000 in 1867 suggests that the large rear addition to the house was completed sometime between 1849 and 1867. In 1867, Jewett sold the property to retired Marlborough farmer Benjamin F. Townsend and his wife Lucy. Census records show that they operated 55 Noxon as a boarding house; assorted white-collar boarders occupied rooms in the house during the Townsend years at 55 Noxon Street. The number of boarders grew to as high as 14 by 1875 when Lucy Townsend (by then a widow) was described as “keeping a boarding house” in the federal census. At Lucy Townsend's death in 1879, the house was inherited by her wealthy nephew George W. Townsend. The house was sold by his heirs in 1882 to Captain James H. Wheeler and his wife Phebe. Wheeler's earliest years were said to have been spent at sea followed by work as a ship builder, hotel keeper and operator of a small boat on the Hudson. The nickname “Captain” followed him his entire life. During his years at 55 Noxon Street, from 1882 to 1887, Wheeler used the house as his family home and for his business as an awning and sail maker. After failing to sell the house at auction in 1887, the Wheelers sold it two years later to Miss Mary Elizabeth Weeks for $4,500. Within the decade after her purchase, the family likely added the rearmost addition to the house to update and expand its kitchen space. For the next three generations, the house would stay in the Weeks-Barrett family. The sister of prominent lawyer James H. Weeks, Mary purchased the house at a time when the family was in transition soon after her brother's death. Without the patriarch James Weeks, described in an 1881 newspaper article on real estate assessments as “the richest man in town,” the family began sinking into shabby gentility. The family's first decade in their new home at 55 Noxon was filled with loss. In 1892, Mary Elizabeth died of pneumonia. In 1893, Charles W. Barrett, the husband of James Weeks’ sister Eloise, also died. Perhaps most tragic was the loss of Eloise and Charles Barrett's son, the quiet and reserved young bank clerk Charles K. Barrett, who died of tuberculosis at age 27 in 1894. Finally, another of Weeks’ sisters, Emily Weeks Vary died in 1897. It must have seemed that the spell of sadness was at last broken in 1900 when Eloise and Charles Barrett's other son, Tom Barrett, married Miss Kate Stoutenburgh of Washington D.C. and Hyde Park. Unfortunately, a year later, Tom Barrett and his wife Kate were burying their infant son. However, Kate's arrival did start a new, more prosperous chapter in the family's history. Tom Barrett began a promising career at the Poughkeepsie National Bank, following in the footsteps of his deceased brother Charles and his uncle Isaac. At 55 Noxon Street, Tom and Kate Barrett settled into the quiet life of a small-town banker and his wife raising their two children, Thomas Jr. and Elizabeth, in a sheltered and loving environment with idyllic summers spent at the Putnam, Connecticut farm of Kate Barrett's father. Thomas Weeks Barrett, Jr. (1902-1947) Born in 1902, Tom Barrett enjoyed a sheltered and loving childhood at 55 Noxon Street. As an adult, Barrett gratefully noted that he had been born into a “protected sphere of family care which has not diminished.” The remarkably tender devotion and domesticity of the Barrett family is evident in the diaries, photos, letters and clippings the family lovingly saved as cherished objects which are now preserved in the Barrett Art Center's archive at 55 Noxon Street. In their public lives, the Barretts showed equally impressive loyalty to their community. Barrett's father, a banker for 54 years, was the trusted expert the community turned to when it needed a treasurer for major civic projects like saving the historic Glebe House from demolition, building St. Francis Hospital, or creating the Bowne Memorial Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Barrett's mother was engaged with the community as well, although in the traditionally acceptable ladylike activities of the D.A.R. and the women's auxiliary of Christ Church.Barrett began his career in the mid-1920s as a freelance commercial artist for New York City department stores and manufacturers - designing things like playing cards, book plates, wallpaper, and radio cabinets. Unable to make a living at this as the Depression deepened, Barrett returned home to 55 Noxon Street in 1929 where he lived for the rest of his life, working from the attic studio he created, which looked out over the backyards and rooftops of his “dear Poky.” During the summers of 1928–1930, a fundamental shift began occurring in Barrett's life as an artist. While visiting friends in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, Barrett began experimenting with oil painting. His depictions of the mills, fishing sheds and wharves of New England caught the attention of art critics and launched Barrett in a new direction. His new success with oil painting brought exhibit opportunities in New York at the Anderson Gallery, Argent Gallery, Times Gallery, Fifteen Gallery, Academy of Allied Arts, and the Brooklyn Museum. Outside of New York City, Barrett's work appeared at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Print Club, the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Palm Beach Art Club, the Wood Cut Society of Kansas City and the Wichita Art Association. In the Hudson Valley, Barrett held one man shows at Bard College and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers. Like other Depression era artists, Barrett also found work as a WPA muralist in 1936 and 1937 and became deeply committed to the art of social realism and the goal of introducing art into everyday life through murals and free public exhibitions.Throughout the 1930s, Barrett continued to more fully explore localism, an art movement that focused on looking for the universal in the particular. He obsessively painted Poughkeepsie, his own home town, in all its desolate and gritty beauty. In 1941, Barrett achieved one of his proudest moments when art critic and collector Duncan Phillips purchased his painting “Downtown Poughkeepsie” for the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington D.C.Tom Barrett Jr.’s focus extended from painting Poughkeepsie to growing its arts community and improving the local quality of life. He pursued a particularly bold agenda for community betterment, advocating for a municipal art gallery, a civic center, and a reimagined waterfront long before others in his community realized the importance of these key elements in urban design. From 55 Noxon Street, Tom Barrett also organized the county’s first art show in 1934. The show, which was held on the top floor of the Luckey-Platt Department store, included the work of approximately 50 local artists. A few months before his death in 1984, fellow artist Vince Walker remembered how it all began: A group of us used to meet in Barrett’s studio to do some sketching and drawing. Tom and I thought it would be a good idea to get an exhibition together so we drove around the county and talked to some artists. Tom contacted Eleanor Roosevelt and some others to sponsor the exhibit. There really was no art community in Poughkeepsie at the time. Exclusive of exhibits at Vassar College, this was the first art exhibition in the community.Over 2,000 people visited this first ever regional art exhibit in the auditorium on the top floor of the Luckey-Platt Department Store. The press pronounced it “exhilarating” and an “eye opener of startling dimensions.” The community seemed stunned not just by the talent they saw revealed but also by how oblivious they had been to its existence. The following year, Tom Barrett and Vince Walker formalized this initial success by founding the Dutchess County Art Association. Tom Barrett served as its first president.Never content with leaving art inside a gallery, Barrett also became county chairman of the national program “American Art Week” which promoted the placement of art in the windows of stores, banks, theaters, and hotels in cities and towns across the country during the first week of each November. Barrett's sister Elizabeth, known to her family as Bet, supported her brother's efforts to grow and sustain the local arts community. A long-time employee of the Poughkeepsie Bank and Trust Company, she helped the arts community with her financial skills. For example, she served as treasurer of the “Victory Calendar” project of 1943. This fundraiser for local war work agencies captured the attention of President Roosevelt, who invited the Victory Calendar artists to hold an exhibit of their work at the FDR Library with a special opening ceremony hosted by the first lady.Barrett's most cherished dream, however, remained the creation of a dedicated space for art exhibits and classes. During much of Barrett's life time, artists of the region had to rely on leased or donated exhibit space in various venues such as the Luckey-Platt Department Store, the Hotel Campbell, Three Arts Bookstore, the Elverhoj Art Shop, the IBM Country Club, and the county fair. Art classes had to be arranged in the evenings at the public school. Barrett's dedication to finding a better and more permanent alternative to these makeshift arrangements even extended to planning out how his own home at 55 Noxon Street could be redesigned as an art gallery with small private quarters at the back of the house for himself, his sister Betty and his parents – if only an “angel” were to step forward with the funding.However, the haunting quality of Barrett's depictions of Poughkeepsie took its toll on Barrett's emotional and physical health. Privately, he mused that the intensity of producing such honest and original art would probably result in his early death. Barrett sought relief from the intensity of oil painting by also becoming a self-taught woodcut artist and printmaker. Barrett scholars Karal Ann Marling and Helen Harrison have noted that in woodcuts and printmaking, Barrett was able to return to his roots in the decorative arts. In woodcut work, Barrett could indulge his special talent for advanced linear thinking which, back in his student days, had convinced him to major in decorative arts and design rather than painting. Among the results of Barrett's woodcut work are some particularly beautiful architectural images that attracted many, including FDR. For his private collection, President Roosevelt purchased a Barrett woodcut of St. James Church in Hyde Park. Barrett's brilliant woodcuts and haunting oil paintings remain important examples of Depression era regionalism in Hudson Valley art history. Despite his extraordinary talent and determination, Tom Barrett's life was filled with challenges too great to surmount: alcoholism, a deep sense of guilt for failing to earn even a modest income from his art, and tormented feelings about a hometown he found both dishearteningly provincial and desolately beautiful. The international horrors of World War II, in particular the use of the atomic bomb, seemed to shake Barrett deeply. At home, the death of Barrett's father in 1944 and the new need to share the family's beloved home with income-producing tenants were difficult burdens to bear. In 1947, Tom Barrett died prematurely as he had predicted. He was 45 years old. In responding to a condolence letter, Barrett's mother wrote simply about her son: “While his life was short, it was full; but he was unhappy about the many sad things in the world that are happening to people.” His home at 55 Noxon Street was the deeply loved touchstone of Barrett's world, serving as both an art studio and a refuge for a gifted but vulnerable soul who found there, with the help of a loving family, the strength to continue believing in himself and the importance of art in the modern world In 1974, 27 years after her brother's death, Barrett's beloved sister Betty fulfilled her brother's dream by bequeathing 55 Noxon to the Dutchess County Art Association as its permanent home – now known as the Barrett Art Center. After taking ownership of Barrett House, the DCAA replaced the failing roof and equipped former domestic spaces on the first floor as galleries, maintaining interior woodwork, fireplaces, and surrounds. On the second floor, two spaces used as bedrooms by the Barrett family were combined to create an art classroom space. Back bedrooms were converted to a library, collections, storage and a gallery space. Barrett's third floor studio was transformed into a printmaking studio with a fire escape. Barrett House maintained this layout until 2017, when the print studio equipment on the third floor was moved to an accessible community space (the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory). Since then the space has returned to its intended use as an artists’ studio.

The New York State Armory is in Poughkeepsie, New York. Built in 1891, it is a Romanesque building designed by Isaac G. Perry, then the New York State Architect, who also designed the state capitol and 26 other armories. In 1982 the Armory was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2012 it was sold to the Greater New York Seventh-Day Adventists Church in a public auction and is planned for community programs and recreation.Located at the junction of Church (eastbound US 44/NY 55) and Market streets downtown, it is across from the Old YMCA. It is a two-and-a-half-story structure made of brick and rusticated sandstone, visible to traffic entering Poughkeepsie from the west via the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Its interior features, such as oak lockers, staircases and floors, are well-preserved. It also retains the original pressed metal ceilings and light fixtures.Governor David Hill attended the cornerstone laying on Memorial Day (then called Decoration Day) in 1891, and spoke of the importance of maintaining state-level military facilities and the respectability conferred by service in the Guard. The armory was completed the following year.Troops were later deployed from here to the Spanish–American War and both 20th-century world wars. It has been host to a variety of events from basketball tournaments to birthday parties for Franklin D. Roosevelt, a resident of nearby Hyde Park. The Company A, 101st Signal Battalion of the New York Army National Guard were stationed in the Armory, however, in 2011 the National Guard moved the remaining 200 soldiers stationed there to Camp Smith down the Hudson River near Peekskill.

The Old Poughkeepsie YMCA is on the west side of Market Street near the corner of Church Street (US 44/NY 55) in Poughkeepsie in New York, United States, across from the former New York State Armory. One of many historic early 20th-century institutional buildings on Market Street, the city's main downtown thoroughfare, it has a glazed terra-cotta front facade, the only building in Poughkeepsie using that material.

The Bardavon 1869 Opera House , in the downtown district of Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, is the oldest continuously operating theater in New York State. Designed by J.A. Wood, it was built in 1869 and served as a venue for various performing arts, community meetings, and celebrations until 1923; it largely resumed this heritage by becoming a general performing-arts facility in 1976. In the interlude period from 1923 to 1975, it served as a cinema, although there were some live performances, especially vaudeville, during this period. Originally called the Collingwood Opera House after its owner and operator James Collingwood, the theater featured an unusual two-stage dome. Between 1869 and 1921, many notable figures of the day graced the Bardavon's stage, including Sarah Bernhardt and John Barrymore.

The Poughkeepsie Savings Bank building is located at 21-23 Market Street in the city of that name in the U.S. state of New York. It was the third home of that bank, the first in the city, chartered in 1831 by William Davies, on that site. After 20 years on nearby Main Street, the bank bought one of its current lots and built. In 1870 the adjacent lot was purchased and the building expanded yet again, reopening anew two years later. In 1911 the bank's success led it to commission a completely new building from the firm of Mowbray and Uffinger, who had designed many bank buildings across the Eastern states.They delivered a Classical Revival building, with slightly trapezoidal walls reflecting the constraints of the site. Its front facade, made of Pennsylvania marble on a granite base, uses two Ionic order columns flanked by Doric pilasters. The deeply recessed entryway and vestibule is done in cast bronze and ornamental glass.Inside, the main banking room is a 40 by 40 foot (12 m by 12 m) with 60-foot (18 m) ceilings, with Ionic pilasters and a continuous entablature rising from a white marble floor (currently carpeted) and red marble wainscot. At the time it opened, it also had a skylight and 19 by 17½-foot (6 by 5 m) stained glass window by Philadelphia's D'Ascenzo Studios commemorating the Half Moon on Henry Hudson's journey up the river named for him and Robert Fulton's pioneering steamboat journey up the river on the Clermont. The overall effect was to cast the building as a temple of commerce.Originally the tellers' counter was a U-shaped extension from the south wall, to allow customer interaction on all three sides. In 1931, Uffinger, Foster & Bookwalter, successor firm to the original architects, was retained to modernize the floor plan, and extended the counter to enclose the building's northeast corner, but otherwise made no significant alterations. The south wall was opened in 1948 to allow the use of the adjoining building as office space. Nine years later the interior underwent renovations that blocked the skylight and obscured the stained glass. Interior lighting thereafter came from chandeliers, which were themselves replaced after two decades.At that time, the building was meant to be included in Poughkeepsie's first Multiple Property Submission (MPS) to the National Register of Historic Places, but the bank objected. Later, after it had changed its name to Bank of the Hudson and moved its headquarters elsewhere while retaining the building as a branch, it dropped the objection and the building was added in 1998 as part of a later MPS. The bank itself has since been acquired by TD Banknorth, which used it as a branch office until the early 2010s. In 2016 it was the local headquarters for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign during the weeks before the New York primary. Volunteers decorated the vault with crime scene tape, and pasted on it a quotation from the candidate: "If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist."